Dr. Pierre Kory on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1671

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Kory is describing IMSS (Mexico's social security agency), which in late 2020/early 2021 ran a test-and-treat program offering ivermectin to COVID-19 outpatients, and he cites an internal IMSS report claiming up to a 75% lower hospitalization rate among those who took it. That report was not a randomized controlled trial: it was an uncontrolled observational comparison released by the agency itself, not a peer-reviewed study, so its 75% figure has not been independently validated. A 2023 systematic review published in BMJ Global Health assessed the underlying clinical trial evidence for ivermectin COVID-19 kit distribution programs across eight Latin American countries, including Mexico. It found that of the 33 randomized controlled trials of ivermectin for COVID-19 available at the time, the majority carried a substantial risk of bias under GRADE criteria, and concluded that Latin American governments distributed ivermectin-containing kits to their populations without high-quality evidence that the drug reduced hospitalization or mortality. That review did not evaluate the IMSS program's specific 75% figure directly, but its finding that the broader evidence base for ivermectin kit distribution was low-quality and largely unsupported by rigorous trials undercuts the reliability of Kory's claim. Independent, well-controlled randomized trials of ivermectin conducted around the same period found no significant reduction in hospitalization or disease progression, further weakening the basis for treating the IMSS figure as reliable evidence of ivermectin's effect.